I know this is a wild long shot.
I remember a book from when I was a small child. I rented it every chance I got from the library. I thought it was “little bear has a sick day” but it has NOTHING to do with the little bear series. I only remember the cover - light pastel pink, a bear on the cover in his bed. It struck a cord and I feel I need to find this book simply to make sure i didn’t imagine it.
Hello- I'm looking for a young adult novel that I read in the 90s, there was a boy with some kind of magic (maybe telekinesis?) who befriends a girl who is able to change or fix things by concentrating her will power. I think the boy was the main character. Maybe the girl had to use her will power to temporarily fix an object they needed to reach some goal? Possibly to fix some item they needed to open a gate but I could be misremembering. I think her power might be inherited. And I think at the end of the book she used her will power to move clouds. I think it had a red cover (hardcover). Sorry the details are fuzzy, thanks for trying!
My little sibling recently got into an old comic called Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. The art style sparked something in my brain that I cannot for the life of me remember!
It was a book or series I read when I was a pre-teen to early teen years. It either was a graphic novel or had a Gothic teen boy cartoonish drawing on the cover. It had a similar angular art style, but not quite the same. He was drawn more boxy with an almost rectangle head and big boxy fingers, kind of slouched backwards with a creepy smile, possibly missing a tooth or something. He possibly had stitches on his head or been a zombie or something, but I cant remember for sure... trying to dig him out of the recesses of my brain haha.
I read it probably sometime between 2010-2014. I cannot remember the plot very much, but he may have had a sister.
I know I dont have much but figured I'd post just in case anyone could remember something like that because its driving me crazy!
I read this years ago and I loved it, and since then I've never been able to find it. I'm half convinced it was a fever dream, but my dreams just aren't that good.
So, the main character shows up with his cat in his briefcase.
Due to a case of mistaken identity, he ends up on a starship on a loooooong mission. He just sort of goes along with it/doesn't realize what's happening. No one checks the briefcase, so the cat comes to.
Space things happen, there's adventure and intrigue. The cat steals hearts and scenes. He's a big orange tomcat I believe.
There's some massive, life threatening drama involving canned salmon, theft and sabotage.
There may be a murder plot and a broken engagement?
It's written in a very tongue in cheek, British humor style kinda reminiscent of Douglas Adams. I believe it's from the 60s-70s, it's old, anyway.
It's told in first person, and the man and his cat are the central characters.
It was REALLY REALLY GOOD. Witty, sharp, funny, suspenseful, epic.
I held it in my two hands at one point. I know I did. Every so often I scour the internet for ut and come up empty, but someone else HAS to have read this, right?? Lifetime supply of canned salmon to whoever helps me figure it out!
Edit: for more details and a better summary of plot/characters, see this post I made during a previous episode of WHAT IS THIS BOOK??
Edit 2: so I let my curiosity override my moral compass and tried Google AI. After a lengthy back and forth, where it said I "broke the internet," and asked a variety of questions to try to jog my memory, it gave up. It asked me if I wanted a summary of my conversation to "hand back to the human sleuths of reddit." Here it is:
I am trying to track down a standalone sci-fi comedy novel that I read around 2014 from a Little Free Library. It was a slim, naked hardcover (around 200 pages, missing its dust jacket). The writing style is first-person, incredibly dry, deadpan, and polite—heavy Douglas Adams meets Dorothy Sayers / Lord Peter Wimsey vibes, but with an American setting.
I posted about this a while back, but it's still unsolved. We've managed to narrow down the exact narrative structure:
The Protagonist: A highly articulate academic, a Doctor of Literature (PhD, not an MD) who constantly quotes Shakespeare to himself, his cat, and others.
The Cat: A silent, real cat carried in a suitcase/briefcase.
The Immediate Opening: The book skips any travel fluff and starts immediately in California. The protagonist is visiting an old friend on a military base and sets up a date for "the day after tomorrow" with a local woman.
The Inciting Incident: A romantic rival switches his name on a military manifest. The protagonist goes to the base gate for lunch, gets caught in a whirlwind of frantic military bureaucracy:
"Doctor?"
"Yes."
"Right this way."
His polite, academic manners prevent him from interrupting. He gets aggressively rushed through automated tests, blood draws, and injected with knockout drugs. Nobody notices that his briefcase is literally growling/purring. He wakes up in deep space on a 20-to-30-year military mission.
The Shipboard Plot: Because of his title, he is forced to act as the ship's medical officer. He turns out to be remarkably competent, using dry logic and common sense to solve problems as they occur, earning the crew's genuine respect.
The Mystery / Cat Frame-Job: The cat is allowed to roam the ship freely and becomes a pseudo-crewmate. However, ship rations (canned tuna/salmon) start disappearing. The corrupt ship's cook frames the cat using basic circumstantial logic ("cat eats this, this is gone, cat is guilty").
The Climax: The protagonist turns into an amateur sleuth. He uses deadpan detective logic to conduct a physical search of the ship, uncovers the cook's hidden stash of stolen tuna, and completely clears the cat's honor.
The Resolution: There is also elements of ship sabotage going on. After the cat is vindicated, the crew works together to MacGyver a solution to override the automated flight path, beating the decades-long timeline to get back to Earth early so he can marry the California lady.
Physical Details:
Format: Standalone novel, roughly 200 pages.
Binding: Hardcover (mine was naked/missing a jacket, likely a Science Fiction Book Club edition or a rebound library book).
Era/Style: Feels like a late 1970s, 1980s, or early 1990s American/Canadian author writing a direct, deadpan homage to a British drawing-room farce but setting it in a military space-pulp world. No mixed-media or fake logs—just straight, unbroken first-person prose.
Does this specific "Literature PhD acting as a Space MD" or the "framed briefcase cat" ring a bell for any vintage collectors? Thank you
Trying to track down a book (on behalf of my daughter) borrowed from from a UK library (around 2024/5). Details she remembers:
Any ideas? Thanks!
This is a long shot. Even chat GPT can't figure it out. Sometime around 2003-2005 in the 4th or 5th grade we were read a short story that was surprisingly spooky. It was about a kid that was at the top of a slide, at the bottom of the slide was a mysterious hole that he would fall into. The story ends with the kids pushing off to go down the slide. We dont find out what happens to him. Its been bugging me for years! GPT seems to think its not a chicken soup for the soul story, but more likely a story inside a text book. I dont know why this particular story stands out. Anyone have any idea? I seem to remember it just being called "the slide"